Screenwriter · 1897–1962

William Faulkner

2: briefs
13:00: average
26 min: in total

On film.briefs2

Mildred Pierce

Michael Curtiz · 1945

Mildred Pierce (1945) is a Warner Bros. drama directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Joan Crawford as a divorced mother who builds a restaurant empire only to be undone by her daughter’s ambition and cruelty. Adapted from James M. Cain’s novel but reshaped as a murder-tinged thriller to satisfy censorship rules, it foregrounds Crawford’s restrained, physically precise performance and Ernest Haller’s atmospheric cinematography. Though structurally conventional and morally rigid, its focus on labour, class, and maternal exhaustion gives it enduring resonance.

13:00

The Story of Temple Drake

Stephen Roberts · 1933

Stephen Roberts’s 1933 adaptation of William Faulkner’s Sanctuary stars Miriam Hopkins as Temple Drake, a Southern woman whose recklessness leads to coercion, assault, and courtroom reckoning. Produced by Benjamin Glazer at Paramount, shot by Karl Struss, and adapted under strict pre-Code scrutiny, it softens the novel’s extremes but retains its moral unease — making it a key document of Hollywood’s transition into enforced restraint.